About Training Wheels City

This site began after a second-hand bike sat unused in a hallway for eleven months. It had been bought a size up, on the reasoning that children grow, and the child it was bought for could not put her feet on the ground and would not go near it. The bike was not the problem and neither was she. The chart in the shop was.

What followed was a lot of reading, a lot of borrowed spanners and a fairly short list of things that turned out to matter. Those are what this site writes about.

How the guides work

Each one starts from a decision a grown-up actually has to make, gives the numbers or the sequence needed to make it, and says where the advice stops applying. They are written for people standing in a shop or a hallway with a child getting impatient, so they get to the point.

Measurements are given in metric, with wheel sizes in inches because that is how bikes are sold everywhere. Where a range is given, it overlaps on purpose — children do not fall neatly into brackets.

What we stay out of

We do not sell bikes, helmets, tools or courses, and nobody pays to be mentioned. Where a type of component is named it is because the type behaves differently, not because of any arrangement with a brand.

We also do not give medical guidance of any kind, and nothing here should be read as an assessment of what is right for a particular child. Families know their own children; this site knows about saddle heights.

Corrections

If a guide gets something wrong, or does not match what happened in your street, the contact page reaches a person and corrections do get made.